


exit seraphim

by foxbones



Series: mad girl's love song [1]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, if you all don't jump on this train with me i swear to god i will turn this train around, post-ep fic, spoilers up to 1x3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 22:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14483073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxbones/pseuds/foxbones
Summary: How to catch a predator when you are not quite prey: you make yourself irresistible. Or, you are already unintentionally irresistible to the predator, and they jump at the chance anyway.The Berlin aftermath. Post-ep fic for 1x03.





	exit seraphim

 

 

 

 

She looks fucking awful. Good. She ought to look the way she feels, right?

Her dress is stained with blood, just across the left breast, a smear down her side where he must have slid when she finally got to him, held him like a child, his weight bringing them both to the ground. A bruise is forming on her shoulder, and tomorrow her eye will be blue and sour green from where a knee made accidental contact as its owner gyrated to the music, one of many limbs that came flying at her body and the body in her arms, the body of a friend.

A message on her phone has told her to return to her hotel and await further instructions. Leave the German authorities to contain the situation for now, they’ll deal with his corpse, they’ll search the premises, Eve needs to regroup. Prepare for the next step. Take a shower, put on fresh clothes. She’s not in the kind of job anymore where something as bald-faced as death brings the rest of her to the surface. She’s in the kind of job where she slinks off and is expected to get ready for the next secret, the next lie.

But Eve doesn’t.

If they ask, she took the long way back. Or she got lost. Not that they would believe that, now they’ve done their research on what makes Eve tick. Maybe they could have even predicted that she’d get herself alone, away from the scene, away from the hotel, somewhere vulnerable.

Somewhere she can draw her out.

 

 

 

 

 

A body slides up against hers on the train. No one looked when she got on with blood stains visible, a dark spray on her cheekbone, no one looks now as a hand snakes around her wrist. Bless German propriety.

“You know,” Eve says, watching the pair of boots beside her slide across the floor to cross at the ankles, a dancer’s pose. “There was a time I would have said you were too smart for this. You’d never have gotten where you are now if you were taking these kinds of risks. I assume something’s changed.”

A voice vacillating between accents, almost mocking: “I really can’t help myself where you’re concerned.”

She makes eye contact. The same woman from the hospital. The same...shit, she can’t hold her gaze much longer. Like looking into the fucking sun.

 

 

 

 

 

The woman stands up at a certain point, taking Eve by the wrist. At the stop, they emerge onto the street and a hand goes to Eve’s forehead, pushes a curl away, but she pulls out of her grip, shakes her head.

“Don’t try to be cute after what you did tonight.”

“What _I_ did? Do you blame the scorpion for stinging whoever puts it in their mouth?”

“He was…” The weight is still in her hands if she lets herself think about it, a dense emptiness, a heaviness like misery. “He was important to me.”

“Were you lovers?” A laugh, musical in a way she wants to hate, but no, she can’t hate any of it. “I’m only kidding. Of course you weren’t. Besides, everyone is important to someone. You think they don’t bargain with the happiness of their loved ones in the end? ‘I have a wife, I have a family, don’t do this to them. Etcetera, etcetera'. It's almost always the exact same line.” She wiggles her fingers. “If all love is special, then no love is special.”

“But he didn’t deserve this.”

“The others did?”

“Yes, actually.”

She's smirking again. “Because they were bad people?”

“I’ve read their files.”

“Oh, so you're an expert. Have you ever hurt someone?”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe someone thinks you ought to be dead, too.”

“I seriously doubt that anything I ever did--”

“Thresholds for offense are different for everyone. You’d be surprised what ruins lives.”

“That’s rich coming from someone who literally kills people for a living.”

“And it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.” The woman smirks, her nose wrinkling pleasantly, and she hates that it’s fucking cute or something. “My threshold is abnormally high.”

Clearly, she’s not going to get shit from her for now. “Where are we going?”

“Döner kebabs. I promise they are the best in Berlin.” She sighs, taking Eve’s hand again, lacing their fingers. “God, I’m _starving_ , aren’t you?”

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re too beautiful, you know. That’s your problem.”

The woman wipes garlic sauce from the corner of her mouth. Not that it was in any way impeding her aesthetic. “Why is it a problem?”

“Beautiful girls stick out. They get noticed. You can never be inconspicuous when you look like that.” A group of teenage boys have entered the restaurant, their eyes immediately falling on the other occupant of the table. “You’re a gun going off for every man with a pulse in a hundred meter radius.”

A smile to the group, coy and sweet, but not inviting. Not unless she needed it to be, Eve’s sure of that. The woman wipes at the corner of her mouth. “Beautiful girls get away with things.”

“Beautiful girls get caught.”

“Not by you, apparently.”

Eve snorts. “You’re caught right now, aren’t you?”

“You tell me.”

She rolls her eyes, chewing carefully. “I think it’s obvious that I caught you.”

“I think that depends on what comes next.”

 

 

 

 

 

Outside, a light rain has started.

“Do you know what a villanelle is?”

“Some kind of poem.”

“It has lots of rules to follow. It’s usually about obsession.”

“Fascinating.”

“Eve was the first woman.”

“I’ve heard.”

“She brought sin to the world, though. The original naughty girl.” A pause. “You can call me by my name now. I want us to be more personal.”

Villanelle is looking at her now - hasn’t stopped looking at her once, Eve has realized - her eyes particularly bright in the neon and the lights beneath the awning. She knows her hair is probably even wilder than before, and the moisture might be slicking some of the blood from her cheeks. Eve blinks. “What?”

“I have a hotel room.”

“I assumed as much.”

“You shouldn’t sleep yet. Not after such a traumatic evening.”

“Which I have you to thank for.”

“The sun will be up in another hour. I think we should occupy ourselves until it does, and then I’ll get us breakfast.”

“And who says chivalry is dead?”

“I’m not chivalrous, Eve. I have no intention of being gallant with you.” She smirks. "Do you like that word? I found it in the dictionary. I love the dictionary."

 

 

 

 

 

“Are you bored of your marriage? You seem to be.”

Eve watches the ice melting in her cognac, sets it on the edge of her chair. Villanelle watches her from the bed, coiled like a...well, the metaphors are getting to be a bit too much now. “I didn’t realize you were an expert. Had many marriages?”

“Ruined a few.”

She snorts. “I bet.”

“Women like you are obvious. You reek of it.”

“Reek of what?”

“Dissatisfaction. Despondency.”

“Is despondency the right word?”

“Maybe not. English is not my first language.”

“Shocking. So what is?”

A smirk, and a twirling of her hair. Villanelle crawls towards her, the knees of her suit pressing into the bed, tugging slightly at its smoothed sheets, the perfectly arranged pillows. “Do you still fuck?”

“This is what you want to talk about?”

“What else is there? You’re bored of your marriage, your life--”

“Neither of those things are true.”

Villanelle feigns innocence with her expression, her upturned palm, her body rearranging itself on the edge of the bed. “And I’m bored of my job. Here we are, having breakfast--”

“I have yet to see this promised breakfast, by the way.”

“I ordered it up.”

“You don’t know what I like.”

“I guessed.”

“I can’t imagine what that was based on. Did something about me scream ‘poached eggs’?”

“Your interests are very transparent.” A pause. “Has he cheated?”

“Has he-- are you serious? No. _God_ , no.”

“Well, you wouldn’t really know. That’s how they are.”

“Men?”

“Like dogs.”

“Not mine. I mean, he’s an idiot. But he’s my idiot.”

“And you haven’t had sex in...a year? Two?”

Maybe it’s that she hasn’t slept, or that her colleague’s murderer keeps smirking at her, or maybe it’s that it’s six thirty in the morning and she’s drinking in a dress soiled with someone’s insides, maybe that’s why she suddenly feels so ugly about everything. “Why are we talking about my sex life? Let’s talk about yours. Get as invasive as your sick mind feels inclined.”

“You don’t want to hear about mine.”

“It seems only fair considering your extreme interest in what I do or do not do in the privacy of my home.”

“But you don’t want to know about the people I fuck because you’ll be jealous.”

“Right, because of my dead bedroom.”

“No, because you want it to be you.”

“Sorry?”

“So you’re pretending that’s not what this is about. That I’m alone in this.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course.” She takes a sip of her drink. Her phone buzzes. “Breakfast is here.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eggs florentine. Decent coffee. She pretends to be disgusted but, of course, it’s spot-on, it’s disturbingly perfect.

Villanelle keeps watching her eat, too. She doesn’t need to pretend that she’s unnerved - the emotion is all too natural.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

“It’s acceptable,” she lies. “Do you have another job lined up?”

“No more talking about work.”

It must be the caffeine and the alcohol hitting simultaneously. “You know, you might think I’m a fucking idiot--”

“Oh, you’re not. You’re very good, actually. More capable than most of the people who have been set on me, one way or another. It’s just that you _think_ you’re no good, and that’s more interesting, isn’t it?”

Eve actually doesn’t know what to say to that. She allows herself to eat in silence, forbids herself from saying anything else until the other woman breaks the quiet. Which she does, of course.

“I have a whole day planned for us, if you’d like. I think you need to be distracted.”

Eve is aware that her phone buzzed a number of times before she turned it off. She is also aware they can continue to track her regardless of whether or not the phone is powered on, but she chews, swallows, makes eye contact. “I have to get back to work.”

“Does he worry if you don’t check in?” Villanelle takes a noisy bite of toast, wipes the marmalade from her cheek. “Was he already suspicious of infidelity? That’s a sure sign he’s done it himself.”

She breathes in, and then out, feeling as if it’s taking more effort than usual. “Please stop talking about my marriage.”

Villanelle laughs. “I like you when you're defensive.”

“Whatever it is you want me to admit, or say, or however you think you’ll draw some epiphany out of me, it’s not going to happen.”

The other woman stops laughing, crosses her legs, and looks suddenly very serious. “I’m sorry, Eve. See, I was really hoping to fuck you, but a few hours ago, I came to the conclusion that you’re much more upset about tonight than I’d anticipated, and that wouldn’t be right.”

“Sorry, what?”

“I knew you’d turn me down for a day together. And that’s fine. It wasn’t meant to be this weekend. But maybe next weekend? You’ll be free.”

“Wait, Villa...Vil…”

But she is actually falling forward, she is pretty sure that her plate is hitting the floor next to her head, she is down, she is…

 

 

 

 

 

A maid wakes her up. It’s just before noon. There is hollandaise in her hair, and the carpet smells like cognac.

Her suitcase is sitting on the bed, but she can tell from her groggy sorting of her clothes that they have been worn, and not cleaned. Upon further inspection, she realizes--

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

And at the airport, she actually discovers the note tucked into the front pocket.

_Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath is a villanelle_

_You don’t need to memorize it, but at least have a look before I see you next_

_I would be offended if you ignored the request_

_You are capable of ruining my life_

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i know this will be wiped clean by whatever happens on tonight's episode but whatever, i'm on this train, i'm on board all the way, take me home satan
> 
> title taken from the poem villanelle is requesting eve read before their next meeting or else her murdering little heart will be very bruised


End file.
